The Penitentiary
by RaeEssie
Summary: "A lot of folk say jail is an easy place to live in. They reckon if someone stays there long enough, they can get a degree, a television… even a good pay check eventually. Now, some of that may true- in some lucky cases. Then there are the folk like me, Sam Evans."


I was given this prompt by **painbhindmyis81 : **_Could you write a fic where Mercedes goes to see Spiderman for the midnight and Sam goes as well. They could know each other or not depends on you. But they end up sitting next to each other and the Samcedes feels kick in. Please!_

_I changed it a bit, and this is what I got._

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**The Penitentiary**

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A lot of folk say jail is an easy place to live in. They reckon if someone stays there long enough, they can get a degree, a television… even a good pay check eventually. Now, some of that may true- in some lucky cases. Then there are the folk like me, Sam Evans.

I spent twenty-years in McKinley Penitentiary in the C-block in cell number 367. It was a small cell which I'd shared with a man named Matthew Rutherford, a young black man, up until he was transferred to the Crow Block back in 1969. We'd spent five years in that cell that together by then. He was the best friend I'd ever had.

They said he'd killed a man in a bar one night, maybe even two. I'd always found that hard to believe. Matthew, or Ruth as we called him, was a gentle fellow. He hardly spoke and when he did it was to share some type of wisdom. He sung often, song I'd never heard of before.

He kept a photo of a woman on the wall right next to his bed. She was a pretty little thing with long dark hair and thickly lashed brown eyes. Her smile, which made her eyes twinkle, was wide. For a long time, I thought she was Ruth's wife. She visited on every Thursday at precisely three o'clock and stayed with him for an hour before leaving.

Ruth always came back happier and hopeful.

The woman, Mercy, wasn't his wife. She was a cousin on his mother's side. Once Ruth began speaking about her, he didn't stop. From what he told me, she was the only one who bothered speaking to him after he'd been locked up in our cell. His parents had shunned him, his siblings had denied his existence… but not Mercy. She stayed and she visited him every Thursday at three o'clock for four years.

I don't know if he was guilty, but I never thought it mattered. Whatever Matthew Rutherford had done, he'd paid the ultimate price.

The day they came to transfer Ruth to the Crow Block was a sad one. His case had been a complicated one, with years of cancelled and rescheduled trials. But it was over now. He had his sentence and it was horrid.

The Crow Block, known to you as death row, wasn't a place anyone wanted to be though I had heard on a few occasions that the guards were nicer. I'll never forget the day he left. I never understood before, what privilege meant but I knew then.

My own sentence was twenty-five years for the murder of William Schuester, a friend of my father's. Whether I was guilty or not didn't matter. I served my time and I served it well. But I could never forget the look on Ruth's face when they came to take him and the words he said to me. He said: "You're lucky, boy. Four shades darker and you'd be walking the Crow with me."

Ruth was right, as he always was. I prayed that night. I never prayed. It wasn't that I didn't believe in God, because I did. I just never thought it was fair for a person like me to ask for help.

For the next year, I kept quiet. I did what I was ordered to do. I did manage to snag myself a college degree, in arts. The Penitentiary Director, Cooter Menkins, told me in the strictest way possible that with a continuation of this good behaviour, I could have the length of my sentence reduced.

It was hard. I'd grown used to seeing my friend every day, of hearing stories about his Mercy after she visited. My own family had disowned me after my conviction.

But it worsened on the 7th of April, 1970. One of the guards who had been transferred to the Crow Block right along the same time Ruth was transferred came to see me. Noah Puckerman, he was called. Unpleasant and disrespectful were the only ways to describe him up until that day.

He took me out of my cell and led me to the Crow Block, chattering like a drunken fool. I'd never seen him so nervous. Twenty minutes later, I knew why.

Ruth was sitting in the electric chair. Only two people in the room were there to support him. Myself and Miss Mercy, who sat near the front.

Puckerman gave me the seat beside Miss Mercy and sat by my other side.

I wasn't one to cry often, but I did then. I didn't realize how much I was crying until I felt Miss Mercy take one of my hands and squeeze. It was the first time I'd met her, but she understood.

You can tell yourself a lot of lies when it comes to the death sentence. You can tell yourself it's not that bad, you can prepare yourself, you can even console yourself into believing that they deserved it and maybe they did. But the fact remained that it wasn't easy. There would always be one person somewhere who was hurting for the condemned.

Miss Mercy was a strong woman. She wanted to cry, I could tell from the tears in her eyes but she blinked them back whenever they threatened to spill. "Keep your tears for later," she told me. "Matty needs strength, not pity."

Despite the yelling in the back, the insults that were being thrown at Ruth, Miss Mercy kept her cheeks dry and a hand on mine.

Matthew Rutherford's last words were: "Everything is better when you learn to accept what you can't escape". I didn't know it then, but I would remember those words for the rest of my life.

When he fried, as they put it, Miss Mercy squeezed my hand painfully. Her first tear spilled when they announced the time of death. The second spilled when everyone had left the room. Why, and I wonder to this day, would you willingly watch someone die? Wouldn't it kill a part of you, an innocence?

It was the first and last time I saw Miss Mercy during my twenty years at McKinley Penitentiary, though she did send the occasional letter to know of my well-being.

It was also the night Noah Puckerman became known to me as the guard with heart. He'd said it was hard enough to watch a good man die without watching it be done in a room void of support. It was harder still, to watch a lone woman sit there. As far as Noah Puckerman was concerned, Matthew Rutherford – guilty or not – deserved some respect.

The years passed and I got older, wiser in some ways. By the time I hit thirty-eight years of age, I'd done well enough to deserve the five years' probation that was offered. I deserved it.

A lot of folk can say a lot of things about jail, but the truth was you came out a changed man. Whether the change was good or bad was up to you, but you never left untouched.

After twenty years at McKinley Penitentiary, I struggled with freedom. What was I going to do? Me, Sam, who couldn't go to the bathroom without asking. Me, Sam, who had so much to learn about everything. How could I hope for a normal life, when I hadn't the faintest idea what normal was?

I was just Sam Evans, a crook who lived in a hotel and worked in the bookshop a block away.

I found myself missing the familiarity of the Penitentiary. Out here, in the real world, I was nothing. In there, I was Sam; the artist, the quiet one, the one who'd watched his friend die.

I would have given up all together if it hadn't been for Miss Mercy. The local cinema was showing _Spider-Man: The Dragon's Challenge _and though I'd made up my mind to join my old friend in paradise, it caught my eye. It was an old film apparently, but how would I know?

After Ruth had died, I'd lost the joy of reading. The old Spider-man comic books I'd brought with me had stayed on the shelves gathering dust. But in that moment, after fifteen years of ignoring my comics, watching the film seemed like the perfect idea.

Just as I reached into my pocket, digging for change, someone stopped me.

"I'll pay, and I'll take an extra ticket please."

It was the voice that stopped me. Even after fifteen years, it was the same; melodious and calming. I knew it was Miss Mercy before I saw her. "Move along, then. People are waiting." She pushed me away from the ticket booth after she'd paid and smiled nervously.

"I've a lot of things to say," she said quietly, looking at the ground. "None seem quite appropriate. I wanted to pick you up at the gates when they let you go, but I…" she trailed off and I could see her eyes were filled with tears that she furiously wiped away. "I'd made it all the way to the end of the road before I stopped. It was too hard. I couldn't go back after Matty died. I should have."

"You don't owe me anything, Miss Mercy. Not a single thing."

"I do. You were there for him, and after… after you were there for me." She chuckled. "You replied to the grief stricken cousin every time. He used to talk about you a lot."

"He was my friend." I rubbed the back of my neck, hurting at the memory.

"Matty saw things in people others couldn't see. He said you were kind, funny, and thoughtful. But what always struck me as the most important, was that he thought you were worth more than you assumed." Mercy smiled and let out a shuddery breath. "I lost a lot the day he was convicted. I lost my family just as he did. You lost a lot too."

I nodded, replaying the harsh words my family had spoken to me. "I lost everyone."

"Well," she held out one of the tickets, which I gladly took. "Maybe we can be lonely together."

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_Reviews are lovely xx_


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